Facebook SDK bug crashes apps like Timehop

A malfunction in Facebook’s Software Development Kit that lets apps add Login With Facebook, sharing, and other features is causing apps that integrate it like Timehop to repeatedly crash. TechCrunch received a tip that developers were getting tons of user complaints and crash reports starting around noon pacific today due to a problem with the Facebook for iOS SDK. TechCrunch’s testing verified that products like Timehop, Joytunes’ Simply Piano, Momento GIFs, and more keep breaking when users access Facebook features or in some cases just open the app.

This is a big issue for Facebook because it relies on these apps to drive user lock-in. If people use Facebook to log into or share from other apps, they’re less likely to delete their account. But if the Facebook developer platform screws up like this morning, developers could instead highlight sharing via Twitter or SMS, and divert ad buys to other platforms. Most problematically, the bug could push developers to other login platforms like Google’s or Apple’s new Sign In With Apple.

The bug was initially submitted to Facebook’s developer forums by Ryan Layne. These crashes thwart normal usage of other apps, costing their developers ad views and in-app purchases, or leading their users to uninstall or abandon them. TechCrunch contacted Facebook requesting information on the cause of the bug, a timeline for a fix, and what developers should do in the meantime. The company’s PR team is investigating, a representative tells me.

Hitting the Connect Facebook button on Timehop causes the app to crash. Developers in Facebook’s bug reporting forum pile on saying their apps are breaking

The situation highlights the increasing centralization of the web as more and more companies depend on a small number of mobile, hosting, and social platforms. Earlier this month, a Google Cloud outage knocked down Snapchat and Discord. While these tools make it simpler to start a company or launch an app without having to build everything in-house, they introduce platform risk. Beyond technical outages, there’s also the concern that a platform could use its insights to copy its clients, or block them if they compete with the gatekeeper too vigorously as Facebook has done to chat and social media apps in the past.

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Smartphone users are upgrading less frequently — will 5G help?

A new study out of NPD confirms what we already know about the state of the smartphone in 2019. People just aren’t upgrading as frequently. You can see the ramifications of this as companies like Apple and Google scramble to right the ship. Still, it’s nice to put some numbers to the abstract trend.

The analyst firm conducted a study of 3,650 U.S, based cellphone users earlier this year and found that a quarter held onto their previous device for more than three years. That represents an 18 percent increase from two years prior. Twenty-nine percent, meanwhile, have had their current device for two or more years.

Upgrade cycles have slowed, and you can thank higher prices, fewer exciting features and, frankly, better devices for that. In that last sense, at least, smartphone manufactures have kind of painted themselves into a corner on this one. Companies were surely aware that the whole thing was going to plateau and decline eventually, though many have been seemingly caught off-guard by how quickly and severely it has happened.

5G is a bright spot, of course. NPD says ~2/3rds of consumers are aware of the technology (a number that has almost certainly increased since the second half of last year, when the number was collected), and around one-third are “interested” in purchasing such a device. Promising, but I’m also “interested” in purchasing a major league baseball team, so maybe take that bit with a grain or two of salt.

We’re seeing the first few handsets trickle through from companies like Samsung, LG and Motorola, along with some spotty coverage around the U.S. Of course, that’s going to have to be much more ubiquitous before the technology becomes a tangible driver of new handset adoption.

5G is certainly destined to be the next major driving feature in the category — particularly with foldables currently in a somewhat depressing state of limbo. But if company are hoping it will turn around their fortunes entirely, I’ve got some of Trump’s 6G spectrum to sell them.

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AT&T’s 5G network hits (parts of) Las Vegas

Hey, so remember earlier today when I said that new 5G cities still qualify as news, for a little while longer, at least? AT&T is making it under the wire with the addition of Las Vegas to its growing portfolio of 5G business cities.

The addition of Sin City brings the carrier’s total up to 20 cities for its 5G+ — a confusing branding it gave to avoid confusion with its purposefully confusing 5G E branding. Confused? Good. That was kind of the point.

Anyway, AT&T’s certainly adding cities at a rapid clip and outpacing the competition with the sheer number of locations. Of course, it’s important to note two things.

1. This is limited to business users for the time being
2. It’s limited to “parts” of Las Vegas

The second bit is in line with the rest of AT&T’s 5G offerings. It also goes for Verizon’s including the recent additions of Denver and Providence. AT&T hasn’t specified which parts yet (Verizon, on the other hand, was EXTREMELY specific). In both cases, though, I’d anticipate spending plenty of time switching back and forth between 5G and LTE.

If that sounds good, AT&T offers the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G for doing just that.

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Mozilla previews a redesigned and faster Firefox for Android

Mozilla today announced the first preview of a redesigned version of Firefox for Android that promises to be up to two times faster. The new version also introduces an easier to use and rather minimalist user interface, as well as support for collections, Mozilla’s new take on bookmarks. The new browser also features Firefox’s tracking protection, which is on by default. Over time, this preview will become the default Firefox for Android.

A few years ago, with Quantum, the Firefox team make a number of under-the-hood improvements to the browser’s core backend technologies. Now, it is doing something similar with GeckoView, Mozilla’s browser engine for Android. Implementing the technology the team developed for this in the browser now “paves the way for a complete makeover of the mobile Firefox experience,” the organization writes in today’s announcement.

“While all other major Android browsers today are based on Blink and therefore reflective of Google’s decisions about mobile, Firefox’s GeckoView engine ensures us and our users independence,” says the Firefox team. “Building Firefox for Android on GeckoView also results in greater flexibility in terms of the types of privacy and security features we can offer our mobile users.”

An early version of Firefox with GeckoView is now available for testing on Android under the Firefox Preview moniker. Mozilla notes that the user experience will sill change quite a bit before it is final.

When you first launch it, Preview opens up a new default experience that lets you sign in to a Firefox account, decide on whether you want a light or dark theme (or have the system switch automatically depending on the time of day), turn on privacy features and more.

One feature I really appreciate is that, by default, the preview puts the URL bar at the bottom of the screen, so that it’s within easy reach of your thumb. If you swipe up on the URL bar, you get both a share and bookmark icon, too. That takes some getting used to but quickly becomes second nature.

I haven’t run any formal benchmarks, but the preview definitely feels significantly snappier and smoother than any previews Firefox version on Android, up to the point where I wouldn’t hesitate to make it my default browser on mobile, especially given its built-in privacy features. I haven’t run into any hard crashes so far either, but this is obviously a beta version, so your mileage may vary.

For the rest of the year, the team will focus on optimizing the preview for all Android devices, but for now, it’s already worth a look if you’re looking to play with a new mobile browser on your Android device and not afraid of the occasional bug.

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Denver and Providence are next up for Verizon’s 5G roll out

There’s going to be a point in the not so distant future when the addition of new 5G cities won’t be news. After several years of hype, however, we’re still not quite there. The 5G picture is set to be quite different by year’s end, but for now, the big network war is one of inches.

Verizon (our boss’s boss’s boss) is flipping the switch in Denver today. The mile-high city is going ultra wideband this week, followed by Providence, Rhode Island on Monday July 1.

As for the devices that can actually access those speeds — that, too, is fairly limited. The list currently includes the LG V50, the Moto Z (plus 5G mod) and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G. That scant three puts the company in contention for most 5G handsets at the moment.

The addition of Providence and Denver brings the list up to four, along with Chicago and Minneapolis. Verizon is promising a full 30 cities by year’s end. The carrier says subscribers can expect spreads to top out at around 1.5 Gbps, with average download speeds at around 450 Mbps.

Coverage will be consented in specific neighborhoods from the sound of it, meaning handsets will likely jump back and forth between 5G and LTE. Here are the specifics on that,

In Denver, Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service will initially be concentrated in areas of Highlands, South of 37th between Tejon and Navajo Streets. Coverage can also be found throughout LoDo and around Coors Field. Businesses and consumers will also have 5G Ultra Wideband service in the Central Business District around popular landmarks like the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Sculpture Park, and outside Paramount Theatre. Areas of Capitol Hill and Northern Sections of The Denver Tech Center will also have Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service.
In Providence, Verizon business and consumer customers will initially see 5G Ultra Wideband service in parts of College Hill, Federal Hill, Mt. Hope, and around landmarks like Brown University (Erickson Athletic Complex, Wriston Quadrangle), Rhode Island School of Design and Providence College.

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Oppo shows first under-screen camera in bid to eliminated the hated notch

Ever since the notch was first added to smartphones, everyone in the world except the deeply deluded and my editor have wished it gone. Oppo has done it — or at least shown that it can be done — with a demonstration unit at Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. iPhone users can console themselves that Oppo kind of sounds like Apple.

Oppo and Xiaomi both teased their upcoming under-screen cameras in recent weeks, but it’s one thing to put out a video and quite another to show a working model to the public. And Oppo’s device was unmistakably present in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, if you were hoping that the first device would knock it out of the park… not quite. Eyes-on photos and impressions from Engadget China show that the transparent LCD used to cover the camera assembly is, or can be, noticeably different from its surroundings. Of course the team there was trying to capture it, and from straight on when you’re not looking for it this effect may not be particularly pronounced. But it’s there.

The camera itself, since it loses a lot of incoming light to the LCD layer, has a larger sensor with bigger pixels on it to better capture that light. This suggests a lower resolution for the unit than other front-facing cameras, and obviously shooting through an extra layer will reduce sharpness and increase artifacting. Oppo says it is working on reducing these in software, but there’s only so much you can do. The sample photos don’t look so hot.

It’s not going to set the world on fire, but Oppo’s less visible camera is a step towards a notchless future, and that I can support. No word on when it’ll actually be available for purchase, or in what models — perhaps Xiaomi will take the opportunity to announce its under-screen camera with a few more of the relevant details.

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Verizon gets FCC approval for a 60 day network lockdown on new phones

Verizon (disclosure: the company that owns the company that owns TC) celebrated an FCC victory this week, as the agency approved a request for a temporary network lockdown on new phones.

The carrier request the feature in February as part of a “safety check period.” The ruling presents a kind of temporary waiver on an FCC dating back to 2008. As the agency auctioned off the C block of the 700MHz spectrum to the carrier, it put a ruling in place requiring it to keep unlocked devices open to all compatible carriers.

This year Verizon argued successfully that this presents a security loophole and that a two-month waiting period would effectively help it implement a kind of fraud safety check. The company argued back in February that offering all phones unlocked upon sale has led to theft that impacts customers at a rate of around 7,000 a month.

“As a result of this activity, these customers have to deal with the inconvenience and hassle of identity theft, and Verizon sustains financial losses,” the company wrote. “While we actively work with law enforcement to stop this growing trend, it’s time that we take a stand to protect our customers.”

The FCC agreed. “This limited waiver will not undermine the underlying policy objectives of the handset unlocking rule and will, in fact, better serve the public interest,” the ruling reads. “The locking rule was adopted to enable consumers to migrate from one service provider to another on compatible networks. Allowing handsets to be locked for 60 days will not interfere significantly with this policy objective.”

Verizon says the waiting period is set to go into effect “very soon.”

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Facebook squeezes money from Instagram with new ads in Explore

Half of Instagram’s billion-plus users open its Explore tab each month to find fresh content and creators. Now the Facebook-owned app will do more to carry its weight by injecting ads into Instagram Explore for the first time. But rather than bombard users with marketing right on the Explore grid, Instagram will instead only show ads after users tap into a post and then start scrolling through similar imagery.

The move feels like a respectful way to monetize Explore without annoying users too much or breaking the high visual quality of the space. Instagram’s director of business product marketing Susan Bucker Rose tells me she believes the ads will feel natural because users already come to Explore “in the mindset of discovery. They want to be exposed to new accounts, people, and brands.”

Instagram will test the ad slots itself at first to promote its ailing IGTV feature before they “launch to a handful of brands over the coming weeks” Rose says. That includes both big name corporations and smaller advertisers looking to drive conversions, video views, or reach. Instagram hopes to roll the ad format out broadly in the next few months.

Advertisers will buy the slots through the same Facebook ads manager and API they use to buy Instagram feed and Stories space. At first advertisers will have to opt in to placing their ads in Instagram Explore too, but eventually that will be the default with an opportunity to opt out.

Here’s how ads work in Instagram Explore. When you open the tab it will look the same as always with a scrollable grid of posts with high engagement that are personalized based on your interests. When you tap into a photo or video, you’ll first see that full-screen. But if you keep scrolling down, Instagram will show you a contextual feed of content similar to the original post where it will insert photo and video ads. And if you tap into one of the themed video channels and then keep scrolling after watching the clip to check out more videos in the same vein, you may see Instagram video ads.

Instagram describes the introduction as “slowly and thoughtfully” — which makes it sound like the volume of ads will ramp up over time.

Explore was first launched in 2012, some two years after Instagram itself, as a merger of the app’s search and “popular” tabs, with an aim of using algorithms that were informed by your existing interests to give you a new way to discover new people and themes to follow in the app beyond those you might pick up by way of you own social circles. It’s had a few revamps, such as the addition of topical channels and hashtags, and the addition of Stories, the format that has proven to be such a hit on Instagram itself. There won’t be any ads in Stories that recently started appearing in Explore.

But interestingly, through all of that, Instagram stayed hands-off when it came to advertising and Explore. The idea is that the content that each person sees in Explore is individualized, with algorithms detecting the kinds of things you like to show you photos, videos and subjects you might most want to see. Apparently Instagram didn’t want to deter browsing of this content.

On the other side of the coin, this has meant that up to now, individuals and brands have not been able to proactively request or pay to be in anyone’s specific Explore tab — although that doesn’t mean that people don’t game this situation (just Google “how to get on Instagram Explore” and you will find many how-to’s to show you the way).

The move to bring ads into the Explore experience has some logic to it. Even before monetization made its way to Instagram in the form of feed advertising, shoppable links and sponsored content posted by influencers, brands and businesses had started using the platform to promote products and to connect with customers. Instagram says that today, 80 percent of its users follow at least one business on Instagram. Now instead of trying desperately to game the Explore algorithm, Instagram can just sell businesses space instead.

With Facebook’s News Feed usage in danger as attention shifts to Stories that it’s still learning to monetize, the company is leaning more on Instagram to keep revenue growing. But Instagram must be sure not to suffocate the golden goose with too many ads.

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300M-user meme site Imgur raises $20M from Coil to pay creators

Meme creators have never gotten their fair share. Remixed and reshared across the web, their jokes props up social networks like Instagram and Twitter that pay back none of their ad revenue to artists and comedians. But 300 million monthly user meme and storytelling app Imgur wants to pioneer a way to pay creators per second people view their content.

Today Imgur announces that it’s raised a $20 million venture equity round from Coil, a micropayment tool for creators that Imgur has agreed to build into its service. Imgur will eventually launch a premium membership with bonus features and content with access reserved for Coil subscribers. Users pay Coil a fixed monthly fee, install its browser extension, the Ripple XRP cryptocurrency is used to route assets around, and then Coil pays creators per second the subscriber spends consuming their content at a rate of 36 cents per hour. Imgur and Coil will earn a cut too, diversifying the meme network’s revenue beyond ads.

“Imgur began in 2009 as a gift to the internet. Over the last 10 years we’ve built one of the largest, most positive online communities, based on our core value to ‘give more than we take’” says Alan Schaaf, founder and CEO of Imgur. The startup bootstrapped for its first five years before raising a $40 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz and Reddit. It’s grown into the premier place to browse ‘meme dumps’ of 50+ funny images and GIFs, as well as art, science, and inspirational tales.

While the new round brings in fewer dollars, Schaaf explains that Imgur raised a valuation that “higher than last time. Our investors are happy with the valuation. This is a really exciting strategic partnership.” Coil founder and CEO Stefan Thomas who was formerly the CTO of cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs will join Imgur’s board. Coil received the money it’s investing in Imgur from Ripple Labs’ Xpring Initiative, which aims to fund proliferation of the Ripple XRP ecosystem, though Imgur received US dollars in the funding deal.

Thomas tells me that “There’s no built in business model” as part of the web. Businesses “either make money with ads or with subscriptions. The problem is that only works when you have huge scale” that can bring about societal problems as we’ve seen with Facebook. Coil will “hopefully offer a third potential business model for the internet and offer a way for creators to get paid.”

Founded last year, Coil’s $5 per month subscription is now in open beta, and it provides extensions for Chrome and Firefox as it tries to get baked into browsers natively. Unlike Patreon where you pick a few creators and choose how much to pay each every month, Coil just lets you browse content from as many creators as you want and it pays them appropriately. Sites like Imgur can code in tags to their pages that tell Coil’s Web Monetization API who to send money to.

The challenge for Imgur will be avoiding the cannibalization of its existing content to the detriment of its non-paying users who’ve always known it to be free. “We’re in the business of making the internet better. We do not plan on taking anything away for the community” Schaaf insists. That means it will have to recruit new creators and add bonus features that are exclusive to Coil subscribers without making the rest of its 300 million users feel deprived.

It’s surprising the meme culture hasn’t spawned more dedicated apps. Decade-old Imgur precedes the explosion in popularity of bite-sized internet content. But rather than just host memes like Instagram, Imgur has built its own meme creation tools. If Imgur and Coil can prove users are willing to pay for quick hits of entertainment and creators can be fairly compensated, they could inspire more apps to help content makers turn their passion into a profession…or at least a nice side hustle.

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India’s Unacademy raises $50 million to grow its online learning platform

Big money continues to flow in India’s growing education market. Bangalore-based Unacademy, which operates an online learning platform to help millions prepare for competitive exams in India, has raised $50 million to further scale its reach.

The Series B financing round was led by Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures, with Unacademy’s own co-founders Gaurav Munjal and Roman Saini also participating in it. The new round means the startup has raised close to $90 million to date.

The four-year-old startup is aimed at students who are preparing for competitive exams to get into a college and those who are pursuing graduation level courses. Unacademy allows students to watch live classes from educators and then engage with the team in any questions they may have. It has 10,000 registered educators and 13 million learners — up from 3 million a year ago.

The startup said it will use the new fund to expand the number of educators it has on the platform, and also add more exam courses. It will also improve its product and expand the team.

Unacademy began its journey as a YouTube channel, but has since expanded to its own app where it offers some courses for free and others through a recently launched subscription business. The subscription service — called Unacademy Plus Subscription — has 50,000 users.

Unacademy also maintains an archive of all the classes, giving students the option to reference to older lectures at any time through the app. The startup says YouTube is still its largest distribution channel. Overall, the platform sees more than 100 million monthly views across the platforms.

“We are seeing unprecedented growth and engagement from learners in smaller towns and cities, and are also very humbled to see that top-quality educators are choosing Unacademy as their primary platform to reach out to students. In the last few months, we have taken bigger strides toward achieving this mission. We have more than 400 top educators from across the country taking live classes every day on Unacademy Plus. This is available to every student, irrespective of their location,” Gaurav Munjal, a founder and CEO of Unacademy said in a statement.

Unacademy competes with unicorn Byju’s, which is widely believed to be the biggest edtech startup in the world with its valuation nearing $4 billion. Unlike Unacademy, Byju’s, which has more than 2.4 million paid subscribers, covers primary school and high school courses as well in addition to competitive under graduation level courses.

In recent months, Unacademy has grown more aggressive with marketing. Last year it tied up with web producing house The Viral Fever to fund a show called “Kota Factory”, which revolves around the lives of students who are preparing to go to an engineering college. In the midst of it, Unacademy also offered low-cost, discounted subscription plans to attract users to its subscription platform.

Unacademy has presence in Indonesia as well, where as of last year, it had about 30 educators. The startup did not offer an update on how its international ambitions are holding up. A representative of Unacademy told TechCrunch recently that the platform does not rely on ads for monetization.

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UK law review eyes abusive trends like deepfaked porn and cyber flashing

The UK government has announced the next phase of a review of the law around the making and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, with ministers saying they want to ensure it keeps pace with evolving digital tech trends.

The review is being initiated in response to concerns that abusive and offensive communications are on the rise, as a result of it becoming easier to create and distribute sexual images of people online without their permission.

Among the issues the Law Commission will consider are so-called ‘revenge porn’, where intimate images of a person are shared without their consent; deepfaked porn, which refers to superimposing a real photograph of a person’s face onto a pornographic image or video without their consent; and cyber flashing, the unpleasant practice of sending unsolicited sexual images to a person’s phone by exploiting technologies such as Bluetooth that allow for proximity-based file sharing.

On the latter practice, the screengrab below is of one of two unsolicited messages I received as pop-ups on my phone in the space of a few seconds while waiting at a UK airport gate — and before I’d had a chance to locate the iOS master setting that actually nixes Bluetooth.

On iOS, even without accepting the AirDrop the cyberflasher is still able to send an unsolicited placeholder image with their request.

Safe to say, this example is at the tamer end of what tends to be involved. More often it’s actual dick pics fired at people’s phones, not a parrot-friendly silicone substitute…

A patchwork of UK laws already covers at least some of the offensive and abusive communications in question, such as the offence of voyeurism under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which criminalises certain non-consensual photography taken for sexual gratification — and carries a two-year maximum prison sentence (with the possibility that a perpetrator may be required to be listed on the sexual offender register); while revenge porn was made a criminal offence under section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

But the government says that while it feels the law in this area is “robust”, it is keen not to be seen as complacent — hence continuing to keep it under review.

It will also hold a public consultation to help assess whether changes in the law are required.

The Law Commission published Phase 1 of their review of Abusive and Offensive Online Communications on November 1 last year — a scoping report setting out the current criminal law which applies.

The second phase, announced today, will consider the non-consensual taking and sharing of intimate images specifically — and look at possible recommendations for reform. Though it will not report for two years so any changes to the law are likely to take several years to make it onto the statute books.

Among specific issues the Law Commission will consider is whether anonymity should automatically be granted to victims of revenge porn.

Commenting in a statement, justice minister Paul Maynard said: “No one should have to suffer the immense distress of having intimate images taken or shared without consent. We are acting to make sure our laws keep pace with emerging technology and trends in these disturbing and humiliating crimes.”

Maynard added that the review builds on recent changes to toughen UK laws around revenge porn and to outlaw ‘upskirting’ in English law; aka the degrading practice of taking intimate photographs of others without consent.

“Too many young people are falling victim to co-ordinated abuse online or the trauma of having their private sexual images shared. That’s not the online world I want our children to grow up in,” added the secretary of state for digital issues, Jeremy Wright, in another supporting statement.

“We’ve already set out world-leading plans to put a new duty of care on online platforms towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator with teeth. This Review will ensure that the current law is fit for purpose as we deliver our commitment to make the UK the safest place to be online.”

The Law Commission review will begin on July 1, 2019 and report back to the government in summer 2021.

Terms of Reference will be published on the Law Commission’s website in due course.

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Facebook may finally let you turn off those annoying notification dots

Sick of those anxiety-inducing red dots constantly appearing on the Groups, Watch, or other tabs in your Facebook app? Well the social network may be easing up a little in its unending war for your attention. Facebook is now testing a toggle to turn off the red in-app notification dots on its homescreen. Until now you had to manually open each of Facebook’s features to extinguishing the maddening flame of the notification badge. This could make Facebook feel more tranquil, and keep you focused on whatever you actually opened the app to do.

“It’s related to the work we’re doing with the well-being team. We’re thinking about how people spend their time in the app and making sure that it’s time well spent” a Facebook spokesperson tells me. Many people can’t feel settled if there are red dots begging to be tapped — a psychological quirk Facebook takes advantage of. The company seems to be realizing that its growth hacking can backfire if its pleas for engagement actually deter us from opening its app in the first place.

The Facebook Notification Dots setting was first spotted in its prototype form by reverse engineering specialist Jane Manchun Wong, hidden in the Android app’s code earlier this summer. Today, social media consultant Matt Navarra noticed the feature being publicly tested. Facebook now confirms to TechCrunch that this is a new global test that started recently on iOS and Android for a subset of users. “We are testing new ways to give people more control over the notifications they receive in the Facebook app” a spokesperson tells me.

Facebook plans to continue offering additional ways to personalize notifications so you don’t miss what’s important but aren’t drowned in noise. “People don’t necessarily want to see a notification on the badge [the in-app dots on tabs] if they’re already getting notifications in the jewel [the red counter on the Facebook app icon on your phone’s homescreen]” the spokesperson tells me. It considered a snooze option but went with an on/off switch that’s the least confusion. The Notification dots feature is likely to roll out to everyone unless it suddenly proves to decimate Facebook usage.

How To Turn Off Facebook Notification Dots

If you have access to this feature test, you’ll find the option in your Facebook app under the three-lined More/Menu tab -> Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Notifications -> Notification Dots. There you can “Choose which shortcuts will show you notifications dots” with options for “Videos On Watch”, “Profile”, “Groups”, “Menu”.

One tab/shortcut where you can’t disable the dots is Notifications, which actually makes sense since that’s the main way the app alerts you to activity around your profile and content. But since you already get a heads-up about new Groups posts or when you’re tagged in a photo there, the notification dots on the other tabs are just redundant and distracting.

If you want to control which activities trigger alerts in your Notifications tab, you can go to More/Menu tab -> Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Notifications -> Notification Settings -> Mobile. There you can see a list of your recent notifications and turn off ones like it in case you’re sick of hearing about friends starting fundraisers, reminders about upcoming events, or comments after yours on a Group post. The Notification Settings page also lets you turn off sound for Facebook notifications, axe them from specific groups or other apps, turn down the frequency of On This Day alerts, and choose what notifications get bumped up to email or text message.

Confusingly, there’s also a totally separate menu that’s accessible from the Notifications tab’s settings gear icon. There you can temporarily or permanently mute push notifications and choose where you receive each type. Obviously there should be a link between these two different spaces. A great next step for Facebook would be allowing user to batch notifications, Instead of either being constantly pestered or totally in the dark, it could let users opt for an occasional digest of notifications, like once per day or when they get to 10 alerts.

A year ago Facebook trumpeted how it launched a Time Well Spent dashboard in its app and Instagram for showing how long per day you use the apps with an option to set a reminder to stop after enough minutes. But buried inside Menu -> Settings & Privacy -> Your Time on Facebook, the toothless feature we’d previously scooped isn’t doing much good. If Facebook wants to be a principled citizen of our devices, it shouldn’t be so hard to say when we do or don’t want to be nagged for attention.

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‘This is Your Life in Silicon Valley’: Former Pinterest President, Moment CEO Tim Kendall on Smartphone Addiction

Welcome to this week’s transcribed edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley. We’re running an experiment for Extra Crunch members that puts This is Your Life in Silicon Valley in words – so you can read from wherever you are.

This is Your Life in Silicon Valley was originally started by Sunil Rajaraman and Jascha Kaykas-Wolff in 2018. Rajaraman is a serial entrepreneur and writer (Co-Founded Scripted.com, and is currently an EIR at Foundation Capital), Kaykas-Wolff is the current CMO at Mozilla and ran marketing at BitTorrent. Rajaraman and Kaykas-Wolff started the podcast after a series of blog posts that Sunil wrote for The Bold Italic went viral.

The goal of the podcast is to cover issues at the intersection of technology and culture – sharing a different perspective of life in the Bay Area. Their guests include entrepreneurs like Sam Lessin, journalists like Kara Swisher and politicians like Mayor Libby Schaaf and local business owners like David White of Flour + Water.

This week’s edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley features Tim Kendall, the former President of Pinterest and current CEO of Moment. Tim ran monetization at Facebook, and has very strong opinions on smartphone addiction and what it is doing to all of us. Tim is an architect of much of the modern social media monetization machinery, so you definitely do not want to miss his perspective on this important subject.

For access to the full transcription, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free. 

Sunil Rajaraman: Welcome to season three of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley. A Podcast about the Bay Area, technology, and culture. I’m your host, Sunil Rajaraman and I’m joined by my cohost, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff: Are you recording?

Rajaraman: I’m recording.

Kaykas-Wolff: I’m almost done. My phone’s been buzzing all afternoon and I just have to finish this text message.

Rajaraman: So you’re one of those people who can’t go five seconds without checking their phone.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/25/this-is-your-life-in-silicon-valley-former-pinterest-president-moment-ceo-tim-kendall-on-smartphone-addiction/
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FTC, Justice Dept. takes coordinated action against robocallers

Federal authorities have announced its latest crackdown on illegal robocallers — taking close to a hundred actions against several companies and individuals blamed for the recent barrage of spam calls.

In the so-called “Operation Call It Quits,” the Federal Trade Commission brought four cases — two filed on its behalf by the Justice Department — and three settlements in cases said to be responsible for making more than a billion illegal robocalls.

Several state and local authorities also brought actions as part of the operation, officials said.

Each year, billions of automatically dialed or spoofed phone calls trick millions into picking up the phone. An annoyance at least, at worse it tricks unsuspecting victims into turning over cash or buying fake or misleading products. So far, the FTC has fined companies more than $200 million but only collected less than 0.01% of the fines because of the agency’s limited enforcement powers.

In this new wave of action, the FTC said it will send a strong signal to the robocalling industry.

Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said Americans are “fed up” with the billions of robocalls received every year. “Today’s joint effort shows that combatting this scourge remains a top priority for law enforcement agencies around the nation,” he said.

It’s the second time the FTC has acted in as many months. In May, the agency also took action against four companies accused of making “billions” of robocalls.

The FTC said its latest action brings the number of robocall violators up to 145.

Several of the cases involved shuttering operations that offer consumers “bogus” credit card interest rate reduction services, which the FTC said specifically targeted seniors. Other cases involved the use of illegal robocalls to promote money-making schemes.

Another cases included actions against Lifewatch, a company pitching medical alert systems, which the FTC contended uses spoofed caller ID information to trick victims into picking up the phone. The company settled for $25.3 million. Meanwhile, Redwood Scientific settled for $18.2 million, suspended due to the inability for defendant Danielle Cadiz to pay, for “deceptively” marketing dentistry products, according to the FTC’s complaint.

The robocalling epidemic has caught the attention of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telecoms and internet industries. Last month, its commissioners proposed a new rule that would make it easier for carriers to block robocalls.

How to stop robocalls spamming your phone

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At last, a camera app that automatically removes all people from your photos

As a misanthrope living in a vibrant city, I’m never short of things to complain about. And in particular the problem of people crowding into my photos, whatever I happen to shoot, is a persistent one. That won’t be an issue any more with Bye Bye Camera, an app that simply removes any humans from photos you take. Finally!

It’s an art project, though a practical one (art can be practical!), by Do Something Good. The collective, in particular the artist damjanski, has worked on a variety of playful takes on the digital era, such as a CAPTCHA that excludes humans, and setting up a dialogue between two Google conversational agents.

The new app, damjanski told Artnome, is “an app for the post-human era… The app takes out the vanity of any selfie and also the person.” Fortunately, it leaves dogs intact.

Of course it’s all done in a self-conscious, arty way — are humans necessary? What defines one? What will the world be like without us? You can ponder those questions or not; fortunately, the app doesn’t require it of you.

Bye Bye Camera works using some of the AI tools that are already out there for the taking in the world of research. It uses YOLO (You Only Look Once), a very efficient object classifier that can quickly denote the outline of a person, and then a separate tool that performs what Adobe has called “context-aware fill.” Between the two of them a person is reliably — if a bit crudely — deleted from any picture you take and credibly filled in by background.

It’s a fun project (though the results are a mixed bag) and it speaks not only to the issues it supposedly raises about the nature of humanity, but also the accessibility of tools under the broad category of “AI” and what they can and should be used for.

You can download Bye Bye Camera for $3 on the iOS App Store.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176981 https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/24/at-last-a-camera-app-that-automatically-removes-all-people-from-your-photos/
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